Thursday, June 01, 2006

Photo Journal

I thought you might like to see some photos of life in the Turtle Mountains:

Here is our almost year old German Shepherd, Samson.

This is Ned, our billy goat. We found out last weekend the reason he is so friendly is that he was bottle fed.This is yesterday's photo of the inside of our hoop house. The watering trough is where we placed the 50 Cornish cross chicks we received last Saturday. We have since then moved those chicks to an outside makeshift coop, and the new chicks picked up at the post office this morning ( Cornish rock -- 50 more of them! and 14 Buff Orpington chicks) are now brooding in the trough. It's hot out today and the chicks were getting overheated, so we opened up the entire back side of the hoop house and will check often to make sure there is enough air flow to keep them at a good temperature.

This looks kind of funny, but it's our makeshift chicken coop! We covered it with a tarp yesterday because we were in for quite a thunderstorm and didn't want anything to happen to the chicks. They seem to be doing just fine in there. We will take another photo when it is uncovered. The structure in the background is where we are currently living -- our walk-out basement. One of our garden areas is located behind the van.

Here is Ebony and her twins, You (no spots) and You-Too (spotted)! Jim named them, as he was the only one of our family here when they were born. They sure have grown up. You is up on our milking stand.

This is a photo of our Cornish cross chicks before they were moved out of the hoop house and into their own coop. Sure didn't take long before they started growing their feathers.

Here is Andrew, driving our "4-wheeler!" It is an old International Cub Cadet that we used when I was growing up (long time ago!). The boys use it for everything, including trips to the mailbox. They have attached our little red wagon to it so they can haul water, rocks, brothers, etc. In the background you can see the hoop house, our new chicken coop, our wood pile that needs to be cut and stacked, and concrete chunks that will some day be used to finish off our walkway. The majority of our garden areas are located on the other side of our hoop house.

4 comments:

Hi Lynn! Love the photos! Keep them coming! Question: how are you keeping the outdoor chicks safe from predators? I'm so nervous about leaving our babies out. We brought their bin outside in the shade today because it was so hot and they were roasting indoors. They were very excited! We took a few at a time out to wander around in the grass. A few were timid and cheeped loudly but others got right into it and started roaming around hunting bugs. Funny thing, a thunder storm was rumbling in the distance and they suddenly got clingy and flew into my lap. Guess I'm the mama!

"How do we keep the outdoor chickens safe from predators?" Right now, we have 52 of the meat chickens in that movable chicken tractor. We're not going to be moving it at all though until the egg layers are in there. It has chicken wire all the way around, on the back, front, and bottom. There is just about no way anything could get in, or out, of there. However, the plan is to (hopefully) free range the hens this summer, and that will mean that they will be exposed to predators all day long, and then we'll shut them in at night (the most dangerous time). Now, with two dogs, and living out in the wilds, it might not work like planned. In that case we'll have to go to plan B. Unfortunately, plan B isn't very clear at the moment.

I know some of my friends camp out most of the summer near the chickens to keep predators away. Last year we didn't have any trouble here, even with the chicken tractor that didn't have a bottom on it. We will probably experiment with free ranging by using some of the meat chickens first, since they're 'expendable' to a certain extent.